I really feel for anyone who "bombs", especially someone that wants to do well so badly. The above video I found today while lazily rolling along through Youtube. Apparently the video has been out for awhile and I am always late on these things, but I've watched it 3 times so far all the way through and my favorite part is the very end. Check out the young guy's posture and demeanor as the lead anchor takes over at the very end, the anchor thanks him for the update, and the guy gives him a heavy, "Yeah"--it says so much.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
The Above Video
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
DCComedy4Now is going to call it at 10:12 pm...
Ahead of Fox, ahead of NBC, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, and CNN, is going to name Barack Obama, the next President, the 44th, of the United States of America. DCComedy4now, is your trusted news source on election coverage.
Congrats!
Making fun of Republicans gets pretty old...
And while I'm enjoying the some of the Obama impersonations, my prediction is that the Joe Biden impersonation, along with just the man's general personality, is going to take hold. I am interested to see what kind of shift there will be on the landscape of political humor, hopefully it will move beyond the race of President-elect Obama.
Monday, November 3, 2008
Hello? Oh, hey, yeah...yeah...yeah, I'm an asshole.
Washington DC is supposed to be a city of learned people. In fact, it is a city known for people who have very expensive educations who sacrifice high-paying jobs to work in non-profits in an effort to help out their fellow man.
So with all this education, with all these people thinking for people other than themselves, why have people not learned that nobody wants to hear their fucking cell phone conversation.
I still can't believe this goes on, daily, like it does. Cell phones have been around long enough, you ask anyone with one about the etiquette of using one and they would tell you that there is a time and a place to use it. I thought being an idiot on your cell-phone would be looked at like farting aloud in a room full of strangers by now. You'd think nobody would want to be "that person".
This is a tired topic. Its a fucking cliche that I am even writing about it.
So, I'll make it short, if you ride the D2 bus between Glover Park and Dupont and you just cannot wait, cannot possibly wait and just goooottta have that phone conversation, well then let me at least introduce myself: I'm the creepy one, staring, burning a hole in your forehead, making everything awkward. My name is Mike, when you get off the phone can we talk?
BEGINNING NEOFUTURISM
At The Woolly Mammoth Theater Company in downtown Washington DC
instructor: John Pierson of The Neo-Futurists
One session: Saturday, Jan 3, 12 – 4pm
The Chicago-based NEO-FUTURISTS are renowned for their engaging, immediate, truthful, and highly entertaining Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind. The success of their work stems from the ensemble’s ability to pull uniquely individual material from their own lives and mold it into universally accessible art. In this workshop you will learn the exercises and philosophies behind creating, writing, performing, and directing immediate theatre based on your own life. This class provides specific acting techniques and an opportunity to write and perform pieces for the other workshop students.
Note: This course is for intermediate to advanced level actors.
John Pierson has been a Neo-Futurist for eleven years. He is also known as John Jughead Pierson, the founding member of the legendary punk band Screeching Weasel and the revolutionary acoustic punk band Even In Blackouts. Under another pseudonym, Ian Pierce, he has written, produced and published over 20 plays and one novel, Weasels In A Box.
Homegrown Comedy
NOVEMBER 7th
The DC Improv proudly presents "Homegrown Comedy", the monthly comedy series featuring the rising talent of local comedians in Washington, DC. Over the past five years, the Improv has supported local comedy with local talent showcases and comedy competitions. In the spirit of those shows, "Homegrown Comedy" will feature some of the best amateurs and local professional comics Washington, DC has to offer.
Homegrown Comedy is a way for the DC Improv to showcase its local talent and for local talent to be seen by the DC Improv. Each show will feature seven comedians performing tight 8 minute sets. It's a great opportunity for people to come check out Washington's next comedy stars and more importantly, laugh! November 7th Line-Up:
Hosted by: Mike Way
Kojo Mante, Mike Eltringham, Matt Sapsford, Keith Irvin, Lisa Fine, Tim Miller, and Brian Parise
Aye...
Well whats going on DC Comedy Scene?!
We've been busy over here at the DCComedy4now offices, really busy...really, really busy.
Take note of the new open-mic off to the right side of the page at the Mad Hatter off of 19th and M on Wednesdays.
NO open-mic at Chief Ikes tonight because of the Redskins-Steelers game.
So being the last schmuck over at the DCComedy4now offices I've gotten behind in my work of keeping up the place. Lets face it, its not the liveliest of places to walk into each morning.
Keep an eye out for the upcoming up performances:
-Bill Burr this week at the DC Improv
-Erin Jackson, Rob Maher, and Ryan Conner at the DC Improv November 15th
-DC Improv, Washington Improv Theater and Comedy Sports (Ballston Mall in Virginia) are going to be starting their new semesters for classes very soon!
Type rest of the post here
Thursday, October 23, 2008
New Open Mic @ Mad Hatter
From Host Ben Long: Mad Hatter Comedy Open Mic will be Wednesday, November 8th, 9-11pm, and every Wednesday thereafter. Doing well will matter as winning comics, as determined by who gets the most votes (so bring your friends to vote for you), will get 25 and 50 dollars for 2nd and 1st. Comics can sign up starting as early as 5:30 with me, Ben, as I will be bartending from then until close and hosting the show. The Mad Hatter is on 19th and M in midtown near Dupont Circle.
Contact Ben Long at benlong10@yahoo.com for info if need be.
Monday, October 20, 2008
We Are Alive!
Get out tonight to Chief Ike's! Now with less Bukkake! Sign-up 7:30! Show starts...
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Stand-Up for Diversity
Only the first 100 comics who arrive will be seen so early attendance is strongly recommended. Comics will have one minute at the initial audition. A handful will be invited back later that day to perform a longer set and the top comics will be selected to perform in the showcase the following
evening. This is not a show that will air on NBC, but rather an opportunity to be showcased for agents, casting directors, and television executives in consideration for future casting and development
This open call is for diverse comics who are serious about being funny. You must have five minutes
of polished material.
For more info, check outwww.DiverseCityNBC.com or www.StandUpNBC.com
Past finalists have:
Signed Talent Holding Deals with NBC
Received a trip to Los Angeles to showcase for agents, managers, and casting directors
Performed at the NACA (National Association of Campus Activities) Convention
Performed for talent executives from “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” and the creative team
behind “Last Comic Standing.”
And much more...
Sunday, October 12 at 10 a.m.
36 Light Street, Baltimore, MD 21202
Oh How Novel
The great originator of this blog Nick Turner said to me words that I'll never forget. I had just started doing stand-up again--a little more half-ass than before; and I had just come off stage from killing the momentum of the show and really had made it awkward for the next guy to go up when Nick took me by the shoulder and walked me over to the corner of Chief Ike's, got down to my eye level, put both hands on my shoulders, looked me dead in the eye and said, "Fuck man, I really need some weed".Which to me, meant that Nick needed content. He needed content for his metaphysical being, his blogself if you will.This blog really needs some weed right now.
And I will be the first one to admit, that I have have not been paying my dealer who will now not front me any dope. All my friends are out because I have just been smoking theirs while just saving mine to get high school girls stoned in Safeway parking lots.As an artist and as a person one of my biggest problems is novelty. It has been this way for me for as long as I can remember. Many, many of life’s endeavors have just gone unfinished because once the euphoric quality of a task as dissipated so has my interest in following through with it.
I always started off the school year like a terror, off that fresh feeling of “This year is going to be different”. If the school year would have been 5 weeks long I would have been number 1 in my class. Around the 6th week, school was able to hold my attention about as well as a "Reba" marathon on Lifetime. But the last few weeks of the semester especially when I was in borderline country such as a few points away from puling a "C" to a "B" or a "B" to an "A" or whatever the case may have been, school had a new sort of vigor to it and once again I would be engaged--my situation would again have certain novelty to it. Living your life in order NOT to get your ass kicked by your parents certainly keeps things interesting.
It could be said that it is just putting things off to the last minute, that I am lazy; and that is true. I have a reputation with my friends and family for being late to things. It is something that I am trying to improve upon at the moment. But let me ask you this: what is more exciting, getting somewhere early and waiting for everything to start? Or discovering that your Volkswagen Golf can go zero to sixty just under 7 seconds?
Sports and the school year always started off the same way…I would always start off hot but then cool. I was very streaky, especially as a batter in baseball. I always had to “feel” something, I had to be riding high or I was just flat. I was a pitcher in high school and in college, I always loved going in relief or closing a game much better than I liked starting a game. And for the most part I was a starter, but the part about starting that sucked was waiting around for the game to start. And sometimes that would start about two days before the first pitch. I never understood why I had to be there so early. The game would start at 1 and my coach would want everyone there like at 10 O'clock. As I got older, I learned that I could sneak off for a little bit during home games to a pizza place up the street, where I would spend about 45 minutes playing "Gallaga".
The need for novelty has permeated into every aspect of my personality. I don't think I really ever had much of a relationship with a woman until I recognized this fact about myself. But then later, I would just use it as a crutch as I waxed pathetically, "Yeah, but I'm just so complicated...I just have this need for novelty, its really complex and difficult to explain", as I would turn into the entire cast of "The View". I dated a Czech girl for a while, who’s accent and overall view of culture certainly had a novel appeal to it and I think that is the draw for many at first with an “exotic” relationship. But then after while I realized that she is human like anyone else--as much as I wanted her to be a member of the ne0-faction Millennia Unit of the Post-Eastern Block Gestapo assigned to me as part of a reconnaissance assignment that would end one night as she would slice my throat in my sleep, kiss me “Good-bye” (with tongue) and Parkour out the bedroom window into a waiting limousine.
This need for novelty has been to me in my work-life has been about has hampering as one of Nomar Garciapara’s hamstrings. Jobs I have held in my life: more than 30? Since I was 15, I have averaged about 2 jobs per year. I was only fired once? Twice, maybe...has to have been at least 3 times. But most of the time I just got bored and even when I would stay with a job, I made sure everyone knew I was bored. I think over the years, my grandmother has died twenty-two hundred times, a handful more than my grandfather, and while I have yet to father a child, the kids I have had, have had to be picked up from school for everything from the sniffles to cholera. “Yeah, my son has dysentery...yeah, well hey, I thought the Ganges would be cleaner than Ocean City”. I never could sit still. I always had to be somewhere else, doing something “cooler”.It took me a long time to figure out, to do the really cool stuff, you have to do a lot of boring worthless shit--well not all worthless, feels like it though. One of my favorite jobs I ever had was when I was 18--I delivered sausages, "Spicy Chorizo". I drove a refrigerator truck from my hometown up in Maryland, all around the beltway, stopping at Shoppers Food Warehouses and little bodegas all along the way. I would go down as far as Dale City and Burke city Virginia. That job had constant novelty. I was once flagged down by a pregnant hooker, who I thought at first must have been going into labor. As soon as I pulled over not even coming to a complete stop, from the look I was getting I realized that she wasn't going into labor, which was the quickest, weirdest, saddest session I had ever had of putting "two and two together".
So, I guess what I am trying to convey is...I've hit a rut with this blog. I am doing a disservice to its originators Nick and Jason who deserve more than what I have been giving it. I wanted and I still do, to be a resource tool for networking and discussion in the comic community here in DC and Baltimore too. I think I hit a downturn a bit, the novelty had worn off and the work of it all started to bring me down a bit. But it is something that I am trying to shrug off, that’s what life is about, most of it, if not all of it, is--not everything is always new and refreshing. So, really, I guess what I should say here is, “Shut the fuck up Mike, and just do the work”.
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